


One Plan. But what about the others?

by moonbunny789



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Endgame, Gen, Some Humor, Some angst, Spoilers, a lot of pointing out how easy the plan was to mess up, crack kinda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-02-09 11:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18637006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbunny789/pseuds/moonbunny789
Summary: Strange said one plan would work... but that plan got easy to mess up real fast. A series of oneshots about how the Endgame plan could have gone horribly wrong, or right depending on your opinion. Kind of a crackfic. Spoilers!





	1. Seeing Double

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure how long this will be. Still processing the movie

In the aftermath of the battle of New York, despite Loki being in handcuffs, no one had relaxed yet. They all were fully on guard, and when a tense group of superheroes includes super soldiers and gods, maybe whispering behind a wall wasn’t the best plan. As Tony, Steve, and Scott shot glances at their younger selves and discussed their plan, well, they aren’t the super spies of the Avengers team.

Now, Loki may have just been tossed around by the Hulk and possibly have a concussion, but he was pretty sure that there appeared to be a second Stark and Rogers hiding behind some debris and that seemed wrong. As a trickster and god of lies, this looked super weird. Also, if he escaped while they were dealing with this? It’d be a slight change of plans, but he will take that chance!

“Terribly sorry to interrupt, truly, but do you all see the doppelgangers in the corner?”

Things got very loud after that.


	2. But what about us?

As the Sorcerer Supreme explained alternate realities and timelines and the consequences of stealing Infinity Stones to Bruce, one thought kept floating to the front of his mind.

“If removing just one stone permanently kills a timeline, what is going to happen to our universe? Thanos destroyed ALL the stones. Are we doomed? Even if we get every stone, bring everyone back, and return the stones to when they came from, are we in danger still? We’ll just have brought everyone back so that we can watch the universe implode together.”

There was an awkward pause. “You could try using the borrowed stones to bring back the broken ones?” She did not sound sure about that at all, this inspired no confidence in Bruce. But whatever it takes right? Thanos managed to use the stones twice, we can too. That, or they are screwed.


	3. Two Tonys and a Tesseract.

Tony Stark was a very observant man. He noticed an agent playing Galagar with one glance. He noticed the shield agent who looked exactly like him. He noticed this agent hovering by him, looking at the case with the Tesseract. He was planning on waiting until the crowd thinned a bit before addressing this but then he flicked something at him, Tony didn’t know what, but it can’t be good. He stepped back, away from Fury’s boss and toward his double.

“Maybe this handsome gentleman can help decide who gets the Tesseract. What’s your name, gorgeous, is it Tony? What a coincidence! Now why don’t you start explaining what is happening.”


	4. Good things come to those who wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not sure how many of these i'm gonna make and some of the ideas will be very similar

Loki noticed them immediately. The two (three?) people hiding in the corner who definitely should not be there. Loki has studied a lot of things in his long life, and he can tell just by looking that, somehow, the Tony Stark and Steve Rogers hiding were the same as the two talking in front of him. Looking at them, they are older. More grey hair, wrinkles, and a look in their eyes saying they’ve seen true horror.

Loki decided not to say anything. What are these older Avengers doing? He wanted to know. So, he waited. The older Steve left, right after the agents left with the scepter. Does he know what truly powers it?

The older Tony had followed them down to the lobby. He was dressed as an average shield agent, but Loki is a master of disguise and that would never fool him. This Tony seemed to be after the tesseract. He watched as the younger Stark collapsed and knew that the older had caused it somehow. The older grabbed the case with the Tesseract and tried to run but was stopped by the green beast. Leaving the Tesseract right in front of Loki, while no one was looking at him. He picked it up of course, as interesting as this is, he can and will escape here.

…but Loki has always struggled to restrain his curiosity and found himself teleporting to where the time travelers had regrouped. He will probably regret not just opening a portal to the other side of the universe, but he had to know.

“…but we can’t go back without the stone, we need them all to reverse what Thanos did.”

Well that certainly was worth it. This might be perfect. He needs to hide from Thanos, and these Avengers seem to have beaten him somehow. And they need the infinity stone in his hand. Getting rid of his muzzle, he steps toward them.

“Gentlemen, I believe we both have something the other wants. Give me asylum from the mad titan and I’ll give you the stone.”

Heads turned.

The look on his brothers face when they came back with Loki was amazing. (He would never admit it, but Loki was incredibly happy that Thor wanted to see him and apparently had mourned him several times) (The look on Thor’s face got rid of any doubts Tony and Steve had about bringing Loki with them.)


	5. What Comes Next?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still not sure how many of these I'm making but i still have a few ideas

Steve stood on the newly remade time machine with each of the gems. Bruce was explaining how important it was to get them exactly where they were before, like they were never taken, when it occurred to Steve.

“But we literally can’t give them back in the same condition. Think of the Tesseract; it isn’t the Tesseract anymore is it? It’s the space stone. The people of that timeline alternate reality whatever you call it are definitely going to notice that. And the Aether, ignoring how I get the reality stone to return to its previous form, am I really supposed to reinject Jane with it? I’m pretty sure it was hurting her. How do I even return the soul stone? It didn’t exist until Nat sacrificed herself to make it what am I supposed to do with it? Throw it off the cliff? Hand it to the guardian and ask for a return? And if I give those Hydra agents a stronger version of Loki’s scepter and they make even stronger super weapons, that goes against everything I stand for. The mind stone is stronger than when it was the gem that powered the scepter, we know that, Ultron and Vision taught us that. I’m NOT helping Hydra, Bruce, it’s not happening.”

He paused. “Also, how can we be sure we can actually go back to the same timeline we created? Going back the first time caused a new reality to form, wouldn’t going back again just make another alternate timeline? Its possible I’ll go and it’ll be the one missing the stone but it is also possible that it doesn’t work like that.”

Steve gave a hard look, “Now, I’ll try my best, I’m not giving up immediately. Avengers don’t give up like that and we wouldn’t all be here if we did. But I want you to admit you made a promise that you have no idea whether you can fulfil or not. It is possible we doomed those timelines and if we did, we have to live with that. Let’s get started.”


	6. Thanks but who are you?

Tony was happy to be rescued, really, but he had no idea who this woman was. Well, it’s a long way to Earth, might as well get to know her.

They exchanged the usual ‘How did you become a superhero’ stories and other facts, like how it was Steve and Natasha who asked her to find him. She mentioned that she came back to earth because Fury paged her, which hurt his technologically advanced heart. He told her he could make better tech in a cave, and that he had indeed done that before. She mentioned she knew how Fury lost his eye… and that became all Tony wanted to know. 

“Please! I swear I won’t tell anyone!” After mentioning it, Carol noticed Tony’s reaction and figured she shouldn’t tell her friend’s secret, even if his Avengers were his trusted team.

“No.”

“Hey, I could still die in this ship, please, it’s my dying wish, I want to know!”

“You aren’t going to die, I won’t let you.”

“Fine, but there is a high likelihood I won’t remember most of this conversation, oxygen loss and all. So tell me.”

“You swear not to tell anyone?”

She told him and he started laughing, only stopping from vertigo caused by lack of oxygen.

“A cat scratch? Danvers, you’re killing me, I can’t laugh that hard right now, there’s not enough air on this ship to handle that. Big, scary, ‘look at me wrong and I’ll end you’ Fury lost his eye to a kitty cat? You are my new favorite Captain.”


	7. Talk to the Time Wizard

Peter was confused. And sad. What felt like a few hours ago, he was jumping out of his bus and into space, and now its five years later and he just saw his father figure die. Again. Why do all the adults in his life die?

As the post-snap chaos calmed and the battle truly ended, he learned about the world he now lives in. Five years is such a long time, what did he miss? At some point, someone decided to put everyone in a room together to explain what happened. The first snap, the time travel, and the part they were all there for.  
It was while they were talking about the time travel, about how it went wrong and how hard it was to execute, that he remembered what Doctor Strange said. Only one timeline where we beat Thanos. But that’s kind of impossible. Doctor Banner was talking about the sorcerer woman who was explaining the branching universe theory to him, and if that’s how time actually works, then there had to be more than one way. What if they didn’t have Nebula time travel? Then past-Thanos wouldn’t have found them and followed to the future and Mr. Stark would still be alive.

Peter confronted him. Asked him exactly what he saw, why he said only one plan would work.

Strange replied, “I couldn’t see what they’d do once they traveled to the past, even with the time stone, looking five years into the future to watch people then travel back in time would be more than difficult. I knew a few things. The only plans that worked involved failing first and then time travel. They had a few options on when they could travel to, so that wasn’t positive, but the times that occurred were the most common ones from across the timelines I viewed. I knew there was a high possibility of Thanos returning after the destruction was undone. After that, several people could have ended up using the stones, most likely Tony. There were several ways to win the battle but as it progressed, I saw which path it was taking. This is the timeline we have. It may have gone differently in an alternate universe, but this is ours and we have to live with how things happened here.”

He looked at Peter, saddened, “For what its worth, I was hoping it wouldn’t have ended quite like this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is no way that five minutes of searching the future told him every possible way things could have happened ESPECIALLY when you add time travel in there


End file.
